Around 3,000 attendees marched from the North Coast Co-op to the Humboldt County Courthouse on October 18th for the nationwide No Kings protest.
The streets were overflowing with protesters, all lined up along the streets near the courthouse. Music by Harmonic Howl swirled around the protest, big inflatable frog suits, Trump balloons, and powerful signs being hoisted up to the sky flooded Eureka.
With the U.S.’s current divisive political climate, protests have been popping up with more and more frequency.
Protesting is a free way to advocate for change within a society and get people involved with the issues within our nation. It plays a huge role, in the United States especially, in the people’s right to express their disapproval of political and social issues.
They have the ability to put pressure on government/authority figures to make change, as well as stir up empowerment within a nation to stand for truth and what is right. But what makes a protest effective? What do people consider a successful protest?
Anne Fricke, a local activist, specifically for Prader-Willi Syndrome, a genetic condition, attended the No Kings protest as a protest marshal. “It is our duty to show up at the No-Kings protest,” Fricke said. But protesting is only one small portion of resistance. “It’s going to take more than that,” Fricke said. Voting, protesting, and education are all a part of resistance, and it’s going to take all that power to make a change.
Protesting doesn’t always have to mean making a rapid shift in society. To some, a successful protest can bring awareness, starting the conversation between two sides who oppose one another.
“Having dialogue with somebody who disagrees with you in a way that gets them to think about what you’re saying is successful,” Arcata High science teacher Shannon Kresge said.
A successful “protest” is an incredibly broad term. Protests aren’t necessarily measured in success; that’s not the point of them. The main idea is being able to be heard. To be able to see that people are upset. Exercising your opinions and beliefs does not have to have immediate success tied to it to be effective.
Protesters for No-Kings are showing up for a variety of issues occurring in the U.S. Fricke was speaking on the videos on social media of violent ICE raids on immigrant families. “Because people are being seriously harmed,” Fricke said. “We have a moral obligation to speak up, to demand that things change.”
